The journey began at 8:43 a.m. on Wednesday October 7, 2009. The four teams went outside while the CIU waited in ME 255 for information. The CIU felt nervous and useless. They were nervous that they might not figure out the puzzle and felt useless because they were not doing anything. The reporters started taking notes about the experience to ease their minds and keep themselves occupied. The detectives were anxiously awaiting a phone call or text so that they could begin figuring out the puzzle. All of the CIU checked their phones repeatedly to make sure their ringers were on and that they had signal. The CIU did not want to be blamed if the class lost the competition which explains the compulsive checking of cell phones every two seconds.
All of sudden, a cell phone rang. 8:53 a.m. One of the detectives, received the call. “Team 3,” “Megan,” “Schleman Hall,” and “what’s up with my roof” were all we heard. Megan told Krista she believed that the roof of Schleman had something to do with Purdue going green. She said there had been stories in the Exponent about the small garden and picnic area on the roof. Purdue is trying to be more eco-friendly to plants on the roof. Team 3 had located their clue near Schleman Hall.
After the phone call, we all began getting on the computers to search the importance of the roof.
“I don’t wanna be the girl that laughs the loudest.” The sound of Shanna’s ringtone “Sober” by Pink broke the CIU’s research. 8:57 a.m. Shanna had a hard time understanding Barry from Team 1. She asked him to repeat himself a few times.
We did not hear anything from Shanna until after she hung up the phone. “Identify the motto: Stew, PMU, corridor, new landscaping” was the second piece we received. Shanna hung up the phone and then began telling the other members of the CIU what the clue was. During this, Shanna realized she did not have all the information that she needed and called Barry back to get the location of the clue. The clue was located in between the Stewart Center and the PMU located near a “monument” for the class of 1935 located near new landscaping.
This clue began to throw us for a loop. We had thought the puzzle had something to do with Purdue going green, but this clue did not seem to have anything to do with being green. We googled the Purdue Memorial Union, class of 1935 and found nothing. We then thought of calling the Union to try to figure out what the “monument” meant.
Team 3 came back to the room first. Upon arriving to the room, they realized they had not taken any pictures and so they went back out into the field.
While looking for this information, another phone rang. 9:01 a.m. Team 2 found their clue.
We received a picture of a the statue entitled “Transformation” statue off Marstellar St. Krista and Katie began to google the significance of the statue.
Pink was heard again, Shanna’s phone rang. 9:03 a.m. Team 4 found their clue. “This new building will be the first certified with this” and Dana said the building would have LEED certification. Team 4 documented their journey of geocaching.
“Our adventure with geocatching began with trying to figure out which direction we were to start heading. We started walking away from the Engineering fountain to get an idea of whether we were heading in the right direction.
This helped us determine which direction the salmon line was pointing us. We thought it led us to the shrub area outside Hovde Hall, so we first searched that area. We thought we found the clue, on top of a bush, but it was just trash. So, we started heading in another direction. (Little did we know that our real clue was very close by!)
We spent the beginning of this activity just trying to figure out the technology and what direction it was pointing us. We knew the general area, but had a hard time pinning it down exactly. We wandered over to the other side of the construction fence where the new Roger B Gatewood wing of ME is being built. We stopped outside of the Engineering Administration building and again were trying to determine the direction. We decided that we would just turn the gps in each direction (slowly, as it takes time to readjust) until the line salmon line matched the green line. We thought if we could find the gps coordinates, Brooke could enter them in her I Phone to try to find the coordinates of our current location, but this did not work.
So, we wandered back to where we started and ended up looking in the same area outside Hovde because we realized that was where the gps was pointing us. Brooke, thankfully, finally found it under the brush/ground cover near the trash we had found earlier. Our clue was "This building will be the 1st on campus certified with this designation." The answer was LEED, the building is called Roger B Gatewood Wing of ME.
Overall, we found the activity fun, although it definitely revealed the complications you can have with depending on technology.”
Right after Shanna got off the phone with Dana, Krista and Katie found some new information and decided to guess what the puzzle was. They guessed the answer was Purdue going green and were correct. The puzzle was solved at 9:05 a.m. We were very frustrated to find that this was the answer because after we received the first clue, we questioned if that was the answer. However, we did not directly ask Prashant about it and therefore it did not count.
After we knew we had the right answer, we began calling the teams to let them know we solved the puzzle.
The teams all came back into the room and Dr. Kisselburgh started a discussion on what was hard or what was challenging within each role. One navigator said they went around in circles in the general area that the GPS device gave them but nothing was there. This was probably due to the overcast sky. Another navigator said that the GPS device did not give them the quickest route to the clue. It took them all over campus. Another navigator tried to zoom in on their location but the GPS device was slow. The updates were also slow in regards to the team’s location. One reporter was concerned with the text messages being received by the CIU. Martha, a CIU reporter felt left out when the CIU received information. She did not receive a phone call or text throughout the process
Dr. Kisselburgh asked us if we had to do this activity again, what would be change to make it better and what other technologies we would use. One person said that video would have been helpful, especially to the CIU so that they would know exactly what was going on as it was happening i.e. being in real-time. There was also a suggestion of being in continuous communication with all the groups. It would have helped the CIU disregard the clues that did not fit with the other clues we received. The CIU could have solved the puzzle much faster if there had been continuous communication.
This activity showed that technologies can be helpful but at the same time presented the many challenges with communicating through technology. At times, cell phones would cut out, leading to information being lost. The GPS devices were not as accurate as they could have been due to the weather. All in all we were successful in figuring out the puzzle and thought the activity was a lot of fun.
